For cosmetic reasons, many children under orthodontic treatment refuse to wear their extra-oral facebow headgear to school and on social occasions. They are usually willing to wear that headgear at home, and even while they are sleeping; however, the reduction in the number of force-minutes each day resulting from not wearing the headgear in public, either prolongs the treatment period or actually causes failure of the treatment.
Heretofore, there has been no adequate part-time substitute for ongoing headgear therapy when the upper or maxillary orthodontic installation consists only of molar band with buccal attachments as anchorage for the facebow-headgear traction device; that is, there has been no device which provided orthodontic treatment and which could be worn to school and other places in public without causing embarrassment to the wearer.
An object of this invention is to provide an intraoral device which can deliver force to the upper and lower molars being treated, thereby eliminating the lost force-minutes, which would otherwise occur during nonuse of the facebow headgear unit.
Another object of the invention is to make it easier to pull forward a lower molar, with or without pulling forward adjacent teeth, while either achieving some rotation of the upper molar, or, with the aid of existing devices, limiting that rotation, or eliminating it.
Another object of the invention is to provide an intraoral device of the type described which can be easily installed and removed by the orthodontic patient.